POSSIBLE ALTERNATE SOURCES OF BAIT 



Depending on the location of seasonal tuna grounds, certain bait 

 resources vary in importance at different times of the year. While there 

 is little likelihood that all Latin American tuna bait grounds will be 

 closed to American fishermenj there is always the possibility that some 

 of them may be, through natural or other causes » Although some regula- 

 tions have been instituted for professed conservation raEBons, there is 

 no evidence of a general decline in the bait resource from over-fishing. 

 (At least one important local bait resource was temporarily destroyed 

 by a natural disaster, "red tide"). United States tuna boat operators, 

 in backing up their claim that they are not depleting the bait stocks, 

 have cited records to show that they are presently fishing in every 

 bait area in which they have fished for the past 25 years. The Inter- 

 American Tropical Tuna Commission has begun a study of the tuna and 

 bait, populations with the objective of developing sufficient knowledge 

 of the resource on which to base, if and when needed, recommendations 

 for an effective management program. 



It is estimated that approximately 50 percent of the tuna bait 

 is taken from Mexican waters, and that, if necessary, these grounds 

 could supply the needs of the entire tuna fleet. There is considerable 

 bait available in waters off southern California which could also be 

 utilized to a much greater extent than at present, in case of emergency. 

 This would ontail certain problems in transporting the bait to the more 

 southern grounds, but is definitely a possibility. However, getting 

 bait exclusively from Mexico or California would cause considerable in- 

 convenience and result in an increase in total ninnir.g time, for the 

 clippers sometimes need two or more leads of bait on a single cruise. 



Certain experiments designed to find a substitute for live tuna 

 bait offer encouraging possibilities and have been discussed on previous 

 pages . Experiments to develop gear for taking pelagic bait on the high 

 seas may partially eliminate the importance of coastal bait grounds. 

 Development of artificial bait fish is also being investigated. Other 

 possibilities for eliminating the need of live bait from tuna fishing, 

 although not advanced to any practical stage at present, lie in the field 

 of electrical fishing and the utilization of sound impulses to arouse the 

 feeding frenzy in tuna to the point where they will strike dead bait or 

 artificial lures. Some of these possibilities are definitely encouraging, 

 others may be rather remote, but they do indicate that within the near 

 future our tuna clippers mi^t be wholly or partially free from their 



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